The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The Lightning Hoof stylists gets his soup at a ride-through, for sitting still and eating soup is not for him

…

The farm itself looked almost deceptively generic. It was too big to a stead, with Shimmer guessing based on the mix of local scents that at least two dozen ponies lived there, plus quite a lot more frequenting the place quite often based on the wagon tracks outside the place.

“That doesn’t surprise me – a place like this would need a lot of hooves to tend the fields. I’m guessing that whoever is in charge is a lesser noble. Look, they even have a banner with a crest hanging at the gate” Cash pointed out, as he pulled the yeddim in to land.

It wasn’t quite dark as they landed, but having had the yeddim slightly ‘altered’ by Heath Rose before they had left so that it temporarily had the fate of a cloud, at least until it landed meant that none noticed it. For the circle this hadn’t meant much, but to anyone observing the giant creature and its cargo flying in the sky they would simply have seen a cloud being moved around by unseen winds. This did mean that the instant they landed a dog started barking from somewhere inside the farm’s courtyard.

The farm itself was a scattering of buildings: a large square farmhouse wrapped around a big central courtyard, with multiple chimneys from the thatched roofs. Next were two large barns, and a scattering of smaller houses, perhaps servant quarters or lodging for day labourers. Around the buildings stretched fields of grain and vegetables as far as the eye could see, and in front of the buildings was a big patch of open dirt covered in cart and hoof tracks – upon which now stood a giant yeddim.

With the dog barking, someone peeked out the closed shutters. A quick shout of surprise from inside the farmhouse meant that everyone inside knew something was up. The flicker of oil lamps followed soon after, with a lone pony plus a lamp peeking out from the gate into the farmhouse: “Who’s there?”

Cash had already jumped down from the yeddim and stood waiting at the gate. His charms of social observation had told him much already, and they had allowed him to adjust his mannerisms, gestures and even posture so that he acted like a local: “That would be I, may I speak with the lord of the house?”

The pony did a double take, then lowered his gaze. Sullen Hoof’s work to disguise Cash as a unicorn was flawless: The horn looked like real jade, shimmering and shining in the flickering light off the pony’s oil lamp and the setting sun: “I… I’m sorry my lord. She is asleep”

“Then kindly wake her. I have come quite a long way with my trusted advisors and henchponies, and I need to veil my entry into Thorns” Cash stated firmly, using the subtlest of charms to instil in the pony a feeling of wanting to cooperate.

Quickly nodding, the pony ducked inside and closed the gate. Quiet voices could be heard inside. Several minutes later the gates opened a fair bit more, revealing the lord of the estate; An old mare dressed in exquisitely ornately embroidered silk clothes, though they did appear to have been put on rather quickly – and she looked rather drowsy: “I am Lady Careno Filamina, who exactly are you?”

“Lady Filamina of house Careno, my name would best be left unspoken, for I conspire against the dark lord that has taken Thorns and seek to free it” Cash opened up, angling for a repour with the lowly noble by speaking ill of the Mask of winters.

The old mare, her mane grey and her bearing the marks of a long life, frowned at Cash: “Oh by the dragons… you’re as bad as the last group of unicorns that came by here, thinking you can oust the mask. Come inside, we’ll talk – and have your ponies move your bloody yeddim into the big barn!”

Cash slipped inside the gate and emerged again an hour later, smiling broadly and smelling faintly of sugar cookies: “So… turns out we really are not the only ‘realm ponies’ trying to liberate Thorns. I think we’d do well in trying to find any resistance groups in the city, then rally and organize what’s left of them – but come on, we’ve got a lot of walking to do”

Apparently, the ponies of the lesser noble house Careno had little faith that the circle would ever return, so the deal Cash had brokered was simple enough: If the circle failed to return within a month, the house would take over the yeddim and their ‘big crate of gear’. Another curious detail Cash had ferreted out was that Thorns tax collectors and patrols didn’t actually reach out to the estate anymore, sticking chiefly to the land covered by the shadowland.

“Wait, so the Mask has abandoned the outer territories of Thorns?” Fire Orchid inquired, sounding quite surprised, for if there was one thing the realm basically never did, then it was giving up land.

Cash shrugged as he trotted down the well-built country road: “I’m guessing that the Mask isn’t stupid enough to commit troops outside of where he can deploy undead support. We know he commands mortal troops, but it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to risk them against Marukan raiders or the odd river pirate, considering what rumors I’ve heard about him in the underworld – and he’s supposedly been harassing the Marukans and keeping them on the defensive, so they’re not going to show up here any time soon”

Sunrise was quick to inquire into what exactly Cash had heard. This turned out to be rumours that the Mask was marshalling his troops and building his army, in order to take another major scavenger land city: “…basically he’s trying to pull another Thorns, but because we destroyed and captured his best diplomat with Typhon, and the incredibly bad reputation Thorns got after they skirmished with Lookshyan rear-guard forces during the battle of Deep Rot, then he hasn’t been able to hoodwink anyone. I might have helped with that too” Cash explained.

“Wonderful – so we’ll have to face a massive undead army garrisoned around Thorns? That’s totally not going to make sneaking off with Juggy any more difficult” Fire Orchid bemoaned.

While Sullen Hoof agreed that having to contend with a large army of the dead didn’t make anything easier, then he also urged for quiet: “Look… we’re already at the edge of the shadowland. Perform the transition ritual and stay quiet. Cash, you were told by the ponies at the farm that Thorns has its border patrols at the edge of the shadowland, right?”

Everyone quickly performed the simple rite that bound them creation, ensuring that a prolonged stay in the underworld wouldn’t see them forever bound there. Once done, they passed into the greying lands, as the powers of the underworld sapped color from all things, walking along rows of wilting trees and dying fields. It was clear to see that the local flora had only recently come under the effects of the shadowland, for a few hardy weeds and plants were fighting to stay alive and keep their green color.

The circle quietly discussed how the Mask might be making the shadowland grow, now that they were in it, and could see how its borders were leeching essence from Creation, and seemingly spreading simply by draining areas around it and leaving them bereft of life and light alike.

“Normal shadowlands do not behave like this – they have much more clear borders. Of course, most other shadowlands are carefully contained… this seems intentionally uncontained, perhaps that’s how it’s spreading” Sunrise mused curiously.

Speaker was inclined to agree: “Sounds plausible – no same pony wants to live near an unchecked and unmarked shadowland, though few in general want to live near one to begin with”

“True – by the same token, Sunrise, have you learned the spell that undoes shadowlands? I mean, we went to all that trouble with Sperimin to get that spell…” Cash wondered as he saw the shadowland inch over a bush and instantly start to wilt it.

Sunrise bowed her head: “I’ll need a couple more days to internalize it. Speaker supervised another sorcery lesson with me before we left – at the rate we’re going towards Thorns I should have figured it out by the time we get there”

Cash was about to say something about how he was happy to hear that, when Sullen Hoof urged everyone to hide, having spotted a ghost patrol coming over a nearby ridge. The circle quietly observed from ditches and behind wilting bushes as forty or so zombie ponies clad in rough and poorly fitting armor shambled down the road, led by a squad of ghost officers. It would not be the last of such patrols the circle would run into before reaching Thorns, sleeping every night in Shimmer’s elsewhere den except for Sully who would keep watch outside and then rest in the den during the day.

Approaching Thorns meant navigating several villages, many of which were not just deserted or abandoned, but also completely picked clean and even stripped of building materials, sometimes only leaving crumbled remains of wattle and daub walls but no structural timbers or even roof tiles. This of course begged the question of where such materials had been taken – for it did not appear to have been done by mortal labourers, based on the shambling zombie tracks and drippings Speaker and Shimmer both found in abundance at each village.

In one village where not all buildings had been demolished and carted off, near a brackish pond, they found a collection of small huts in which a lone pony lived. Cash and Sunrise quickly made polite contact, discovering that the pony inside had been very sick when the village had been swallowed by the shadowland, and as such had been left to die when the village’s population had been forcibly relocated to Thorns, but she had pulled through and now lived off whatever scraps she could find in the village, hiding from the wrecking crews. She told a woeful tale of how the few who tried to run away and escape the shadowland had been set upon by undead hounds and ghostly archers… but Sunrise was able to penetrate her sorrow and gave the mare hope, instilling in her confidence that the circle would be able to save Thorns. By the time Sunrise was done, the mare wept, but with tears of joy, her looking and sounding all the healthier for it.

Proceeding deeper into Thorns territory revealed zombie-crewed strip mines where large carts of ore were being hauled up from the ground and taken to manses that were little more than large essence-fuelled furnaces, the resulting metals being carted to Thorns itself. The circle followed these wagon trains, finding the zombie ponies hauling them quite mindless, though Cash had to ‘talk’ a few ghostly wagon drivers into forgetting their presence more than once.

Continuing towards the actual city of Thorns, the circle couldn’t help but feel intimidated. The rolling hills and flat farmlands around the city were brutally overshadowed by the absolutely enormous mountain next to it… and that mountain had limbs, though quite a few of them were but broken stumps or cut short with ashen nubs, and its head – while alien and of strange primordial design to begin with, clearly lacked two of its three eyes and had a broken jaw that wasn’t set right at all.

“That… looks painful” Speaker mused, appearing quite surprised at how damaged Juggernaut was.

Fire Orchid refrained from giving voice to her immediate impulse of saying that then it would be easier to kill, remembering that it would simply resurrect fully healed in the wyld and rampage into creation again. In leu of this she remarked: “You said it could regenerate… do you think this is how the Mask has it under control? Hurting it and somehow halting its ability to heal itself?”

“Whipping an animal until it does wat you want is a very brutal way of training a creature, and It’s just as likely to make it attack you” Sunrise noted harshly, the sound of disapproval hard to miss.

Speaker considered both viewpoints: “I honestly don’t even know how much of a mind the creature has – but it’s clear that its broken, hurt, and without a doubt in pain”

“That explains what I’m getting” Cash mused, explaining that despite being dozens of miles away, his social charms had discerned what Juggernaut desired the most: It sought one of two things – both equally desperately: Death or freedom – indeed it seemed to the same wish, due to its strange and alien mind. The circle agreed that neither was that much of an option, considering how the thing would undoubtably rampage if simply freed, and Sunrise noted that with her spell she needed all large terrain features to remain in place while the spell was cast or it wouldn’t work.

“Does Juggernaut count as a terrain feature?” Shimmer wondered casually.

Fire Orchid chuckled: “If you’re bigger than a castle, then I’m pretty sure you do”

Fire Orchid and Shimmer chuckled together for a bit as they pulled up the rear, while Cash looked back at last razed village they had just passed by. Sunrise inquired into his worried expression: “Is something bothering you?”

“I’m just trying to wrap my head around what the Mask wants all these houses dismantled for. We’ve seen half a dozen villages at this point that have been completely disassembled and shipped somewhere else. What’s the purpose of it?” Cash wondered, though something in Sunrise’s inquisitive eyes showed that she suspected there was more.

The young priestess trotted up next to Cash, giving him a serious look: “That’s not all of it, is it?”

“No… it’s the farm we landed at initially. It was not anywhere big enough to justify the master of the place having a noble title, or having clothes that nice” Cash mused, clearly having wracked his brains over the many implications of such a strange sight.

Fire Orchid quieted her laughter and quickened her pace, moving up to Cash and Sunrise: “Oh come on – it’s so obvious! With the shadowland expanding, it means less and less farmland to feed the city – that means that prices go up, and I’ll bet good silver that even the city’s nobles have run out of money years ago, so they’re paying the peasants that can still grow and sell them food with minor noble titles and fine clothes from their wardrobes”

“That… that’s quite insightful – how did you come to this conclusion?” Sunrise wondered, while Cash appeared to mull the idea over, finding himself nodding.

The old mare gave Sunrise a knowing look: “I spent a long life as a soldier and mid-rank officer – and as the daughter of a Lookshyan noble family. I’ve been in enough sieges to see what a food shortage in a city can do to prices there, and I’ve been at enough high society social functions to know how petty nobles can be when the chips are down. You’ve only been in that Chung Do sort-of siege, but that wasn’t a real prolonged siege, and you never quite ran out of food there from what I’ve gathered”

“Makes sense – we briefly saw food prices spike in Chung Do when that gang seized control of the city’s granary, but we got that under control very quickly. Speaker, you ever see anything like that?” Sullen Hoof said, all the while closely observing their surroundings to detect any ghost patrols.

Speaker shook his head: “Not really. I’ve heard a lot of stories, but I was in the special forces – not rank and file. We would be sent in to break sieges, not sit and camp at castle walls for months on end. Lookshy generally doesn’t do sieges like that, they’re more likely to send in a siege-strider or bring some other weapon to breach the walls quickly and be done with it. Fire Orchid, you served in the first field force too, how did you end up seeing sieges like that?”

“Because I didn’t serve in that force – I didn’t want my officer commission to look like nepotism because of my mother. I served in the second field force, was part of plenty of long sieges that way around. Your understanding of Lookshyan battle doctrine is very coloured by having been in the first field force. In the second field force we did plenty of low-cost sieges. It was only if we couldn’t lock a place down properly that we’d call in you lot to bust things down quickly” Fire Orchid explained, recalling quite a few sieges that lasted months on end before she would be rotated out – and some of those sieges could continue for much longer than that.

Speaker nodded, mulling over the cost analysis that would go into deciding whether to siege or call for specialists. He had to admit that he had never really considered that equation from the point of view of a regular ground pounder.

This made for interesting conversation among the circle, comparing different points of view – be it Shimmer’s tribal background as a shaman in training, who was taught to be exceptionally reverent and respectful to even lowly spirits versus Sunrise having grown in Great Forks, where spirits and gods walked among mortals and frequently had to be dragged away from tavern-brawls or arrested for public indecency. Similarly, Fire Orchid having served as a Lookshyan frontline legionnaire and officer, compared to Speaker having served in the special forces, made the two have different approaches to military tactics and strategy.

“So… Cash and Sully, I bet you two are at odds on the topic of business and commerce, considering your backgrounds” Shimmer wondered.

Cash shrugged: “No, not really – I want to see trade across Creation blossom and become so solid that I don’t have to manage it anymore. Sully’s focus is to punish cruel merchant princes and whatnot, and raise up those in need – our priorities overlap pretty well – because if there’s one thing Sunhill has taught me, then it’s having an affluent population means they can buy your stuff so much more than simply selling to a few rich noble pricks”

This somehow surprised Shimmer, though she did smile when Speaker noted that she had made a similar incorrect assumption last time around, during her previous incarnation.

Grey and ashen meadows stretched out in front of Thorns proper, which rose as a magnificent city with a grand central palace, and hundreds of lesser but equally beautiful towers that reached above the heavily buttressed city wall. This was Thorns, the city of beauty, of art, home to the scavenger lands’ finest artisans and intellectuals… and it looked bleak, devoid of color, and absolutely drained of life – an aura of misery and suffering radiating from the very walls around the city.

On the ashen meadows before the city, the circle found miserable shepherds tending to flocks of starving sheep that were desperately trying to find bits of grass that hadn’t completely withered and lost all nutritional value – but it was clear that they didn’t have long left.

Closer yet to the city, with the mountainous Juggernaut looming to the south with cloudy eyes the size of a small lake, the circle checked their outfits and disguises: Their several days in the shadowland had begun to drain their clothes of color, while Sullen Hoof had used a disguise charm to make him appear translucent as a ghost. Cash Charmer’s unicorn horn was checked up on one last time, and Speaker put on a different set of clothes, so he wasn’t walking up to the city guard wearing an old Looksyan uniform.

At the city gates, which bore no signs of having been repaired since having been torn open five years prior, stood quite a few city guards-ponies. They were clad in blackened armor and wielding sturdy looking spears. There was traffic going in and out, but it was limited: It was mainly peasants wearing partially faded clothes hauling carts loaded with payment out of the city, or carts loaded with fruit, veg and grain into the city. The guards mainly seemed to inspect the carts going out, checking to see if anyone was trying to sneak out – and right before the circle the guards caught one such pony, a young stallion hiding in a barrel. Both the farmer and the young stallion were dragged back into the city, screaming all the way, for they both knew what dark fate awaited them.

With Sullen Hoof as a ghost up in front, the circle was waved through without question, much to the surprise of the circle – but it seemed that the guards simply bowed their heads respectfully to the faux-ghost Sully.

Playing up the role of a ghost, Sully giggled loudly, knowing well how ghosts were quite emotionally unstable through his extensive journeys in the underworld. The thornguard took no notice of it, Speaker spotting the dark rings around their sunken eyes… these were not healthy ponies helming the gate.

Then again, once inside the city the view that met them was not one of a thriving capital city of a prosperous city state – no, it was a drab and miserable scene of famished beggars lining the street, while ‘posh’ ghosts strutted around as if they owned the place, trailed by zombie servants holding morbidly decorated black umbrellas up above, so that no sunlight would scorch them or their masters. It was grotesque in so many ways, far more so than the melodrama of Stygia, for here the living population was being made to suffer and starve like unwanted vermin.

“I would say we have our work cut out for us…” Sunrise noted, her voice trembling with barely suppressed fury.

Speaker had to struggle to remain put – oh he wanted to simply leap forth and throw healing charms left and right – but he knew that he had to stay hidden, for now.

Cash was about to say something, when Shimmer spotted something: “Oh… this is great”

The circle quickly followed Shimmer over to the large wooden corner-post of a half-timbered building, where she scrutinized some scratches on the thing. This turned out to be claw-speak, the secret Lunar language based on animal sounds and claw or bite-marks. With a hushed tone, she read out: “To those seeking a haven, look into the depths. Hold your nose, and avoid the doctor”

Everyone looked at Speaker. He just shrugged: “Was I expected?”

“I doubt it, but if you would all follow me, then I’m sure we can avoid causing a scene” the cheerful voice of an unknown stallion stated.

The circle turned to see a portly and pale stallion wearing a not just blood-stained, but blood-soaked leather apron and a neat silken cap with a round bit of polished obsidian that hung at his forehead from the cap. Beyond that the stallion’s garb was in fancy purple, reds and greys. The number of knives and scalpels the pony had hanging from his saddlebags rounded off the look, along with his sharp black moustache, goatee, and sharp eyebrows. He was also smiling far too much too: “Come now my good unicorn – let’s not cause a scene”

Cash would later remark that he had felt and resisted some middling social charms that were clearly meant to lure him into something nefarious – but instead Cash flipped the script on the creepy pony, throwing some far more potent and subtle mind control charms back at him: “Why yes my good friend, let’s not – how about some tea instead?”

Retaining his exceptionally creepy smile, the stallion with the bloodstained garb led the circle to a nearby tea house, one that turned out to be staffed by zombie servants and a ghost proprietor. There the weird pony introduced himself as the Seven-Degreed Physician of Black Maladies, which was clearly a title for an abyssal deathknight. Indeed, physician bragged freely about being the chief necro-surgeon of the Mask of Winters, the prime architect of the mask’s finest undead war-machines: “…and one day, I tell you, one day I will make something to surpass even my master’s brilliant creation with Juggernaut!”

“Indeed, and such a grand thing the Juggernaut is! Isn’t it impossible to control such a massive beast?” Cash remarked, his social charms having altered his mannerisms and accent to sound like a pony from the blessed isle, for apparently the physician was original from there, and through Cash’s subtle charms the abyssal saw the secretly solar pony as a dear friend.

The physician casually shrugged, speaking like a dreaming poet waxing about his muse: “My master built his palace on the back of Juggernaut, and its deepest levels connects to the beast’s spine. There he can do this most marvellous thing, where he opens a hatch cut into the beast and journeys to its head! I have no clue what he does there, but to control a monster like that from inside its own head… oh… I can only hope to create a control scheme so sublime and inspired when I stitch together my Magnum Necropus!”

It was beyond obscene to listen to the necromancer physician brag and boast about the hideous creations he had lashed together from bone and carven flesh. He had apparently made many of the undead self-moving battering rams that had smashed the gates of Thorns, and now worked out of a secret laboratory manse in the northern fringe of Thorns territory, called the Sanatorium Sepulchral. It was indeed not unlike listening to a gleeful murderer boasting about how many poor souls, both mortal, spirit and even unicorns, that he had lured to his necro-lab and cut apart to make his ghoulish war machines.

“And such magnificent war machines! Say, how about a guided tour? I simply must these see creations – perhaps even a peek at your plans for your Magnum Necropus?” Cash enticed, tempting the physician with more ego-stroking, so that the circle could scout the Masks’s arsenal.

This led to a ghoulish tour just outside the city, at the grand encampment of the Mask’s growing army. There the circle beheld the absurdly grotesque scene that was hundreds of ghostly necro-surgeons sitting in rank and file, stitching together zombies and inserting long barbed coils of soulsteel into the spines of the corpses, which apparently was part of how one animated a dead body on an industrial scale. Within this encampment, in an underground storage facility, stood hundreds of bonestriders that the physician claimed to have made himself.

The circle had seen such things before – warstriders made of bone and flesh, for an abyssal near Chung Do had been making such horrors out of stolen corpses early on in the circle’s adventures – so the circle knew well the strengths and many weaknesses of such things, and now that they learned of the layout and locations of the Mask’s arsenal, they were able to start scheming to dismantle it all.

As for the physician’s dubiously named ‘Magnum Necropus’, then to see that would require a visit to the physician’s Sanatorium Sepulchral, which Cash politely declined, saying that the he had business with the Mask, which of course was quite important. The physician did not question his master’s plans, to which end the circle was able to return to the city via the docks lining the coastline just outside the city walls, all of them breathing heavy sighs of relief.

“Well, he was certainly full of himself…” Shimmer noted, shaking off a shiver running down her spine.

Sunrise nodded: “Indeed he was – Cash, aside from turning him from trying to lure us to his lab to dissect us, did you even have to use any other mind-control charms on him?”

“None – as long as I kept stroking his ego, he was happy to show us around. He reminds me a lot of… well… us… just as a fucked up dark version of us: A powerful exalt who lives out in the open, who doesn’t hide his power… but uses it for unrepentant evil” Cash said, sounding as if he couldn’t quite believe his own words.

Everyone agreed at for such a murderous lunatic to be in the service of the Mask did not bode well, but at least now they knew where the Masks’s necrotech arsenal was stored, meaning they could strike at it later. With that settled, Fire Orchid remarked: “This… is not quite how I remember Brighting Harbour”

Indeed, the harbour district of Thorns had changed quite a lot since last Fire Orchid had marched into Thorns as part of the Lookshyan victory over the nation some years prior to the place being swallowed up by the Mask and his undead forces. The wooden cargo cranes still swung, but the products being loaded onto merchant ships bore the black mark of the Mask, and Fire Orchid remarked that there used to be a lot more small businesses servicing the ships: “…now it’s all workshops and chimneys. At least the nice seaside homes from the Shenjin district still looks to be there”

“I can hear music from down there, and the clink of ceramic mugs – must be some big taverns if they can cut through the noise here” Sullen Hoof commented, his charm-enhanced senses keenest in the circle.

Passing down through the harbour district, towards Thorns’ port-side city gate, the circle saw zombie work-crews hauling heavy goods around. Fire Orchid noted that inside the city wall, in the northern part of the city, was the in-city half of the Shenjin district, but once through the gate she was shocked to see most of the district’s fancy mansions and estates completely levelled, replaced by iron-clad buildings that honestly looked as if they had been plucked out of a certain factory district of Stygia. Cash found the resemblance rather disturbing: “Their walls are even as greasy as how they used to be in the Street of Swords district in Stygia before I ordered the place redecorated. Still, quite the weapons industry the Mask has here – I counted six barges with coal and charcoal being unloaded in the harbour – I guess Thorns has enough iron mines on its own”

Zombies by the hundreds, working in open courtyards next to gloomy foundries, both looked and smelled as if they did nothing but pound out swords and armor day and night. Speaker’s quick looks at the few mortals that appeared to live in the area confirmed symptoms of long-term sleep deprivation and minor inflammations of the eyes and nose, indicative of prolonged exposure to acrid foundry and forge smoke.

It also didn’t help that at every square and larger street intersection loomed a massive black stone statue of the Mask, displaying a visage of the deathlord as a lord dressed in strange robes wearing many masks around his head. It seemed that the Mask of Winters wanted to remind everyone who was in charge.

“So… the message we found earlier, we should look down? Is there a lower part of the city somewhere?” Shimmer wondered, as they saw a large cart full of rusty-red iron ore pulled by a dozen zombies, with a living pony driver sitting on the cart, guiding the zombies along by prodding them with a long stick every now and then.

Fire Orchid tried to recall what else she could remember of the city’s layout, but Speaker quickly pointed out: “This place probably has really good sewers – the architects from Thorns used to be the very best of the scavenger lands… I don’t think it’s the same ponies masterminding these new decorations”

As one might have expected for a city that at least once had been beautiful, then the sewers were well hidden. Indeed, while most places in Creation just buried its waste behind the outhouse, with only a few places having the knowledge and resources to even think of sewers, let alone build them, then Thorns had been built using the finest of architectural wisdom drawn from the realm and its excellent secondary schools.

Sunhill’s sewer system might be a lot better and more efficient, but Sunhill was a lot smaller than Thorns – and based on the writing chiselled into the brickwork at the sewer entrance the circle found, then the city’s sewer had been built centuries earlier – and for such a construction project to remain functional for so long was honestly quite impressive. It was also locked down quite thoroughly, but Sully’s essence had long ago granted him a most subtle lock-opening touch, making all but the most complicated and magical locks yield to him in an instant.

The sewer entrance the circle had found was also checked for ghosts and other hidden observers – none were found, but the circle was still careful to sneak inside without anyone spotting them. Sullen Hoof went in first, using a charm that let him simply walk through the door, which looked very not-suspicious considering that he was disguised as a semi-transparent ghost. Moments later he poked his head back out, signalling for the rest of the circle to follow, having unlocked the door from inside.

“Alright, now since we’re in a shadowland, then going down means we’re technically descending into the underworld labyrinth. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for any sign that the walls, floor or ceiling starts changing” Sullen Hoof said, as he guided the circle along.

Everyone remained vigilant, Shimmer especially so as she looked for more hidden messages written in clawspeak, but after descending a few levels past the actual sewer the circle found itself quite surprised and distracted… by the amount of ponies they ran into after clearing a corridor, in the far end of a long hall where Shimmer had said she was hearing something in the other end.

It turned out that the undercity of Thorns was alive and kicking. Sure, none of the ponies that the circle saw looked well fed and satisfied, then they were alive and surrounded by anti-Mask graffiti drawn or etched into the stone walls. Luminescent mushrooms held in paper lanterns provided a very soft and dim light, but there were plenty of them.

Huddled in rags, the ponies up in front appeared armed with makeshift spears, clubs and other weapons. They did not look happy to see the circle approach, but as they saw Cash and his fake unicorn horn, they seemed to relax a bit. Fire Orchid quickly stepped up and asked about who was in charge.

A fellow unicorn stepped forth, a rugged and scarred but young cream-colored mare clad in sewer-rags and wearing a ghoulish necklace of bits of zombies and skeletons, trophies from the look of things: “I’m in charge of defending this exit. Were you followed?”

“Good for you – and who are you again?” Cash wondered, noting that the green-eyed unicorn mare had no draconic features at all, marking her as a very low-born unicorn, while he was disguised to look quite high-born with several draconic features.

The unicorn squinted her eyes at the circle: “Wrong answer” – and with that the circle found itself with a lot of spears levelled at it.

Cash instantly figured out the failure in communication: “Right, no we were not followed – now can you please take us to your leader?”

The spears didn’t go down, and Cash found himself getting increasingly annoyed that he wasn’t able to just talk to these sewer-dwellers. The rag-clad unicorn mare sighed: “Of course you were. They hide in the walls when tracking you. Red-Eyes, up in front!”

The muffled sound of soft hooves on the carven stone of the tunnel approached, turning out to come from a pale foal that Speaker instantly recognized as a ghost-blooded pony. Her eyes were blood red, her coat thin, her skin pale. Like everyone else she was dressed in rags, and she carried with her an air of the chill of grave… but Speaker saw through essence sight that her eyes appeared to have flecks of… something… in them, things that reacted to essence, though the price of using it seemed to be that her eyes also began to bleed, not that it seemed to bother her much. It was when she scanned the circle and the far end of the room where they had come from, that she doubled over in pain, clutching her eyes: “They… they’re so bright!”

“The unicorn? No wait, they? What are you!?” the unicorn mare said to the circle as she processed what the foal was saying, before the little filly fell over.

Right, someone with natural essence sight might not have as much control over it as someone who knew a charm for it – and solars were nothing if not shiny, at least metaphysically.

Speaker shot Cash an anxious look. He desperately wanted to leap forth and help the filly, but he knew that it wouldn’t exactly do well to make the entire sewer resistance hate and fear them as anathema…

“You’ll have to forgive us – my friend here is a doctor, he would very much like to help your little friend there” Cash said, carefully, as the unicorn mare had her spear right up to his nose.

The unicorn mare was looking oddly frightened, her spear held tight in the grip of her essence as she floated it before her – there was clearly something afoot that the circle didn’t know of.

“Really now Vanilla? We told you not to let any more foreigners in down here. Disobeying us has consequences” said a haughty and loud mare from behind the circle with a thick northern accent – quickly accompanied by the sound of a metal edge being scraped over the rough-hewn stone floor.

The circle turned and saw a pony clad in very heavy armor that was painted bright white, making it surprisingly easy to see her in the dim light of the mushroom lanterns – though the black blur of essence holding her massive scythe, and the silent but moaning faces pressing out against the surface of the scythe blade, confirmed that she was a deathknight.

“You’re absolute right Rip, this simply won’t stand” a second pony said he stepped out of the shadows, revealing a quite nice-looking stallion with a black coat that was just a little too ‘black’, to the point that it hurt a little just to look at him…